


The Shadow of Death

by the-reylo-void (Anysia)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dark, Death, Death Rituals, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-12 02:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7916359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anysia/pseuds/the-reylo-void
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is Death's instrument, unrepentant and unyielding. But her flame burns so bright...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shadow of Death

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Тень смерти](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10368915) by [Astronautka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astronautka/pseuds/Astronautka)



> This piece is first and foremost a labor of love (for "love" read "many months of work, multiple drafts, and impassioned screaming fits"). It is at its heart a retelling of the fairytale "Godfather Death," with several liberties taken for the sake of Reylo and the human disaster that is Kylo Ren. Much thanks to its many lovely beta readers, as well as my friends who very kindly weathered my endless fits of self-doubt through the drafting process. I dearly hope you enjoy it.

 

 **I.**  He is born Ben Organa-Solo, first son of the house of Alderaan, and as he takes his first breaths the sky turns dark at the horizon and two lambs lie dead in their pen.

 

Later, as Ben naps quietly at his mother’s breast, his father consults in somber tones with the shepherds.

 

“Not a mark on them, milord,” they say. “Like a flame snuffed out in one breath.”

 

At his Christening he flinches as his uncle sprinkles holy water over his forehead, wails at something dark and unseen, and a pox sweeps over the countryside.

 

His mother tries to ignore it. She bounces him on her knee and presses kisses to his chubby cheeks. His father watches with wary eyes.

 

When Ben is old enough to speak, an old washer woman passes away. He stares intently as her brittle body is carted off.

 

“He took her,” Ben tells his father, voice strange and distant.

 

“…who took her, son?” his father asks.

 

“The man,” Ben says. “The man in black. Don’t you see him?”

 

His voice is like soft footfalls over a grave, and his father shivers.

 

 

 

 **II.** Ben cries when they send him to his uncle, to the monastery. He is young, very young, and he clings to his mother’s skirts.

 

His father is gone—merchant trips, his mother says, but Ben doesn’t believe her and isn’t sure she does, either—so she tells him to be brave, be strong. Uncle Luke will help him.

 

The trip is a long one, over land. Longer still when three of the horses spook and shy as the fourth falls down dead.

 

 

 

 **III.** Ben is fifteen, learned in letters and learning to make peace with God. His mother and father had promised to visit him here. He has never seen them.

 

He has seen the man in black, so many times now.

 

The man’s voice is loudest in the nights, as Ben struggles with his meditations, vainly seeks the peace his uncle promises he will find.

 

_You are worth more than this._

 

_Come to me and I will give you the belonging you seek._

 

_My son…_

 

Ben does not sleep.

 

 

 

 **IV.** Ben is collecting herbs for his uncle when the man in black meets him on the path.

 

It is the first time Ben sees him up close, fishbelly-pale skin stretched taut over sharply-angled bones, black eyes and mocking mouth.

 

The man gestures, watching him, and the yarrow in Ben’s arms wilts, blackens, falls.

 

_You know who I am._

 

The boy—for Ben is still a boy, awkward and frightened—nods.

 

The man smiles, stares at him with appraising eyes. _Good._

 

He reaches one bony, gnarled hand within his cloak and extracts a clutch of herbs, blood-red and shining, and hands them to the boy. _Listen well, my young apprentice. With this, I shall see you become a famous physician. Whenever you are called to a sickbed, I shall appear to you._

 

 _If I stand at the afflicted one’s head, state with confidence that he shall be healed and give him_ _this herb._

 

_However… if I stand at his feet, he is mine, and you must deliver him to me._

 

The man’s eyes glitter like dark stones, and the boy gingerly takes the herbs from his hand.

 

 _Do this,_ the man continues, _and you shall have wealth and power beyond that which you can conceive._

 

Ben falters for a moment.

 

But only a moment.

 

 

 

 **V.** When the man in black appears at the monastery a short few days later, its halls run red.

 

Ben’s parents finally make their way to the countryside to see him.

 

His uncle tells them he is dead.

 

 

**VI.** The boy takes the name Kylo Ren. He grows tall and strong, his father in every contour of his sharpening face. He does not care to notice.

 

The man in black is generous. He teaches Ren to heal, shows him the twisting light of the human spirit in the air and how beautiful it is to watch it turn to darkness.

 

 _What did you learn of death in your studies, my son?_ the man in black asks him one day, early on.

 

 _That it is the domain of God, not man,_ Ren responds.

 

The man smiles, all bone-white needle-sharp teeth, and touches Ren’s shoulder. It burns cold even through his coat.

 

 _Death answers to no god,_ he says.

 

Ren shivers.

 

The man smiles wider.

 

 

 

 **VII.** The man in black favors a poetic death, a beautiful one. His obsidian-dark eyes alight at the severance of a life’s thread, the sharpness of splintered bones, the slow waltz of a drowning man.

 

His apprentice is more heavy-handed.

 

For those Death chooses, Ren keeps his blade sharp.

 

 

 

 **VIII.** Ren travels the countryside and builds his reputation as a great healer. The man in black has little need for country women, farmers, traveling merchants. It’s a simple thing: a handful of herbs, and he is set upon by weeping women, drowned in shouts of gratitude.

 

They do not know how often Ren has attended holy men, pox-ridden, with rosaries and Bibles clutched in their gnarled hands. How often he has drawn his blade, sharp and neat, across their throats.

 

 _Not a mark on him_ , voices murmur as Death collects its prize and Ren washes the blood only he can see from his hands.

 

Ren has killed a great many men of the cloth. He feels nothing for them anymore.

 

During his quietest nights, he sometimes thinks of Ben Organa-Solo, hunched by candlelight deep within the monastery.

 

How strongly he has tried to erase the boy’s memory.

 

How difficult it is to forget his first kill.

**IX.** It is a cold winter’s night when the man in black sends Ren an image of his uncle, grizzled and worn, clad in his monk’s robes.

 

Ren understands his task. He sharpens his blade and takes to the road.

 

But the monastery is abandoned.

 

Ren runs his hands over the stone balustrades, the towering columns, and shies away as the statues of saints seem to meet his eyes. He cannot meet theirs.

 

His uncle has left no trace.  Ren searches for a year, frustration mounting high in his chest. He is restless and reckless with his blade; he sleeps little. The press of failure is a dark cloud over his mind.

 

When the man in black appears to him in his sleep, Ren is angry.

 

_Are you sure he isn’t dead?_

 

The man is silent, beckons him forward. In his dream, they descend a winding staircase, down and down and down into a deep dungeon.

 

A sudden flare of light washes over them, and Ren stares into the room, at thousands upon thousands of candles, lit wicks flickering in the chill air.

 

The man moves to stand beside one candle, passes his bone-white fingers through the flame. _Humanity,_ he says, gesturing to the room, the endless lines of flickering candles. His voice carries his disdain.

 

 _Is that his life?_ Ren asks, watching as the flame licks at the man’s fingers. They do not burn.

 

_It is._

 

 _Why can’t you extinguish it yourself, then?_ Ren asks, temper flaring. He blinks, and the man in black moves to another candle, its flame steady and burning bright.

 

The man smiles at him as he cups his hand around the flame, watches it dim.

 

Ren clutches at his throat as it grows tight. His breath shrinks within his lungs.

 

The man stops and looks to him with black eyes gone bright with pleasure.

 

 _Your life is mine, Kylo Ren,_ he says, voice like a foul wind through an abandoned church yard. _Your uncle’s is not._

 

When Ren wakes, he lies very still and breathes deeply, as if to remind himself that his life’s flame still burns.

 

For now.

 

 

 

 **X.** At his thirtieth year, Ren is called to a bedside of the house of Alderaan. He hesitates at the front gates, remembers a boy named Ben, not yet claimed by the shadows.

 

He raises his collar higher. Against the wind, he tells himself.

 

Ren has steeled himself but is unprepared for the sight of his mother, so very small, her face lined with age and tragedy. There is a girl—a young woman, really, perhaps twenty—in the receiving room, sitting close to his mother, watching him carefully.

 

Ren does not recognize her.

 

His mother does not recognize him.

 

He is surprised to find that it hurts.

 

The girl is attractive yet sharp-edged, looking at him with wary, appraising eyes in a heart-shaped face.

 

Ren does not like her.

 

His mother takes the girl’s hand as he sits opposite them, his physician’s bag at his feet. “Forgive us, son,” she says, and Ren’s heart skips until he recognizes it for the empty sentiment it is. “We’ve had a difficult time of it lately. I’m Leia, the lady of the house. This is Rey.”

 

The sharp-edged girl does not smile at him. Ren learns that she is a wild thing from the forest, orphaned, caught poaching deer from his family’s lands ( _Ben’s family_ , he thinks, tries, but it rings hollow). But his mother is a soft-hearted woman, in her own way, and upon seeing the girl’s stark ribs and skinny arms, she took her in, fed her, clothed her.

 

“Han and Leia are the family I never had,” Rey bites at him, and for the first time since the man in black granted him his physician’s silver tongue, Ren does not know what to say.

 

“Han will be fine,” Leia murmurs, pats Rey’s hand. “And in time to see you off to Luke, just you wait.”

 

“…Luke?” Ren’s voice is too high, too sharp, and he curses himself as his mother turns her rheumy eyes to him.

 

But there is no recognition within their depths. “My brother,” Leia says, and her voice is soft. “Rey’s to travel to his monastery in the north in a few days’ time.”

 

Ren’s heart beats faster.

 

 

 

 **XI.** Eventually, Leia stands to excuse herself, to attend her ill husband. “I’ll send for you in a moment,” she tells Ren, and the formality of her voice cuts in a way his blade never could.

 

He is left facing the girl—Rey, he reminds himself—who is prickly-sharp and does not want to talk to him.

 

“Pleasantness is not your forte, I see,” Ren notes, and Rey glares at him.

 

“I have heard stories of you, Kylo Ren.” She rises, walks to the floor-length window beside them and looks to the forest. “Your reputation precedes you. They say the shroud of death follows your footsteps.”

 

“I am a healer.”

 

Rey smiles at him, wry, humorless. “So you say.”

 

Ren stands and joins her at the window, his shoulder just brushing hers. “Do you fear death?”

 

Rey is quiet for a long moment. “I have seen death,” she says, her gaze holding fast to the forest at the boundary of the estate. “With my parents, when I was very small. He was a man, a frightening man, dressed all in black with coal-dark eyes.”

 

Ren is silent, but there is a cold slice down his spine.

 

“He took them,” Rey says, voice soft, distant. “I watched him. But _‘you’ll keep for later,’_ he told me.”

 

She turns from the window, presses her back to it. “I think I imagined it, now. It seemed a kinder thing not to be left behind.”

 

Ren observes her carefully, the way she crosses her arms over her chest, the shine of strength in her eyes, and imagines the man in black caressing a hand over her rosy cheek.

 

His blade burns where it lies hidden within his robes.

 

He has willingly given so many to Death, but Ren knows, somehow, that when it comes for her, his hand will falter.

 

 

 

 **XII.** He is called to his father’s bedside, left to tend to him alone.

 

The man in black appears at the foot of the bed, and Ren is still, silent as he looks to his father’s sleeping form.

 

 _Do not fail me, my apprentice,_ the man in black’s voice is dark with a promise, with a threat. _Or you shall pay a far dearer price than you realize._

 

Ren’s hand is not steady, but his blade falls just the same.

 

 

 

 **XIII.** Rey stares at him at the funeral, eyes red-rimmed and swollen.

     

It tears at him, and Ren does not know why.

        

He wants to comfort her.

_I tried._

 

He hadn’t.

    

_It was an accident._

 

It wasn’t.

 

When he speaks, it is the only honesty he can give her.

 

“I didn’t want this,” he says. His voice breaks on the words.

 

Ren’s head drops to his chest, and he starts as he feels Rey’s small hand wrap around his large one.

 

Her hand is warm in his, and he marvels, briefly, at the heartbeat he feels through her grasp. Warm. Alive.

 

 

 

 **XIV.** Ren stays at the house of Alderaan. He tells himself he is paying a blood debt to his mother, who watches him now with longer, more measured gazes.

 

Rey is by his side each morning, still somber with grief but strong, so strong.

 

She is a fierce thing, a good hand with bow and staff, crowing at Ren’s ineptitude with both. In time, her smile shines in her eyes.

 

Ren has so long dwelt with death that he has forgotten life. Rey fairly pulses with it, and he watches her, the rosy glow of her cheeks, sunlight catching in her hair. It is heady, intoxicating. Beautiful.

 

She is to ride to his uncle’s new monastery in three days’ time, after a proper delay for bereavement.

 

“I’m surprised you haven’t left yet,” she tells him one morning, as they sit side-by-side in the courtyard. Her fingertips ghost against his, and he pretends not to notice. “Haven’t you any patients to attend?”

 

Ren’s breath catches as he sees the man in black skirt the edges of the distant forest. He feels the weight of him press over his mind, feels his dark eyes run him through.

 

Ren threads his fingers through Rey’s and turns away.

 

 

 

 **XV.** The nightmares find him for the first time in years.

 

They are dark things, wicked things. Ren’s hands are wet and dark with blood, Rey’s voice a soft cry as he draws his blade tight across her throat and the man in black smiles as her flame flickers, sputters, _dies_ …

 

Ren wakes with an old scream tearing from his lungs as he thrashes through sweat-soaked linens. His heartbeat thunders in his ears.

 

He forces himself to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Over and over again.

 

The full moon tracks halfway across the evening sky, and he breathes.

 

But he does not sleep.

 

Each time he closes his eyes, he sees Rey’s staring up at him, glassy and still.

 

Sleep eludes him for hours. At last, Ren heaves a deep, irritated sigh and slips into his robe.

 

He finds his way to the cobblestoned courtyard, the way Ben had when he was still such a little thing, so frightened, stealing into the night and breathing the cool forest air and pretending that nothing was wrong, that the shadows didn’t breathe with him…

 

Ren’s heart seizes as his gaze settles on the young woman standing at the far end of the courtyard. Her arms are wrapped tightly around herself, and she stares, unblinking, toward the shifting shadows at the forest’s edge.

 

Ren says nothing, but Rey hears his footfalls and turns. Her hair is unbound, shining in the moonlight and curling over her shoulders. There are dark circles under her eyes.

 

“Can’t sleep?” she asks, _sotto voce_ , but her voice carries in the still night air.

 

She beckons Ren over, and he is helpless to resist her.

 

“I can’t, either,” she whispers as he moves to stand beside her.  

 

“…I saw him again, Ren,” Rey says. Her fingertips graze his, searching. “I saw him.”

 

The latent warmth of his name on her tongue is tempered by the chill down his spine as her words register. “…him?”

 

“The man,” Rey says. “The man dressed in black. The one who…” She bites the inside of her lip, hard, and closes her eyes.

 

Ren’s hands burn with the want to touch her, to gather her into his arms, to comfort and hold, but he remains rooted in place.

 

“…just a dream,” he murmurs. “I have them, too.”

 

“…there were candles,” Rey continues, as if he hadn’t spoken. She opens her eyes and stares to the forest once more. “Everywhere. Some new, some burned to the last, flames flickering down.”

 

She is silent for a long, long moment.

 

Then:

 

“You were there, Ren. You were there and he _took_ you.”

 

He draws half a breath and then she’s _there_ , warm in his arms, and he’s not sure if he’d moved or she had but she’s tucked against his chest and his cheek is pressed flush to her temple.

 

“Just a dream,” Ren says again, very quietly.

 

He feels Rey’s heartbeat against his, quick and deep. She presses closer, loops her arms tightly around his waist, and Ren rubs awkward circles over her trembling shoulderblades.

 

He closes his eyes and, for the first time in years, he prays.

 

 

 

 **XVI.** His mother fetches him at first light the following day, eyes wide and panicked, still pale with grief.

 

Together, they rush to a small guest bedroom, and Ren’s heart stops.

 

Rey is coal-hot from a fever, lying still in her bed.

 

The man in black stands at her feet.

 

“Stay with us, now, Rey,” Ren distantly hears his mother crying, her hand curved around Rey’s pale cheek. He cannot look away from the man’s burning gaze.

 

 _Bring her to me, boy_. The voice stabs through him, and the man disappears.

 

Ren is deaf to his mother’s gentle cries as he kneels at Rey’s bedside. The world seems to tilt at the edges of his vision, blurred and distorted. He strokes back Rey’s sweat-slicked hair with one hand and reaches into his robes with the other.

 

His blade burns against his palm.

 

_Bring her to me._

 

Ren closes his eyes.

 

**_Bring her to me._ **

 

His hand closes around the handful of herbs, blood-red and dark, from so long ago.

 

His fingertips graze Rey’s lips as the herbs pass them.

 

“Stay with me, Rey,” he whispers.

 

When Rey’s eyes slowly open and focus, they hold him whole.

 

 

 

 **XVII.** The world goes dark, fading. Twisting shadows gather around him, cover his eyes and bleed through him.

The man in black waits for him.

 

Ren does not struggle or plead, as he has seen many men do.

 

As they descend into the room of candlelight, he is ready.

 

 _One life must be given for another_ , the man in black says simply, eyes glittering with dark mirth.

 

He cradles a familiar candle in his palms, the flame sputtering down until he grasps the wick between thumb and forefinger. _You are mine, Kylo Ren._

 

Ren’s vision swims, fades. He thinks, briefly, of Rey, of his mother, of his hands wet with blood as he falls.

 

He does not see another candle, half-burned, flare to life as his dies.

 

He does not hear Death’s scream of rage.

 

 

**XVIII.** He hears his name, over and over, an urgent whisper.

 

He opens his eyes slowly to see Rey, her hands over his heart. Her eyes are shining.

 

His mother is behind her, her hands clasped tightly over her mouth.

 

“ _Ben_ ,” she whispers.

 

Again, and again, and again.

 

 

 

 **XIX.** His mother finally leaves on unsteady legs to fetch a physician. The shoulder of her dress is damp with his tears, as he’d crumbled and wept against her, in her arms.

 

Her own still cascade down her cheeks, and she lingers in the doorway, cannot seem to take her eyes from her son.

 

“It’s okay,” Ben murmurs. He pulls her into a tight hug, marvels at how small she feels.

 

How much smaller he had been when last he’d felt his mother’s arms around him.

 

She takes her leave, and then it is just him, just Rey, watching him from the center of the room like the wary, skittish thing Ben imagined she had been when she fought to survive in the wilds.

 

“…I saw you,” she whispers at last. “I saw you, with him, there in the candlelight.”

 

She crosses to him, curves one hand around his cheek, and her shoulders heave as she starts to cry.

 

“You burned so bright, Ben,” Rey manages through her tears. “You burned _so bright._ ”

 

The years seem to tumble past him, and he is young Ben Organa-Solo, he is the fallen Kylo Ren, he is the dark hand of death…

 

He is _Rey’s_ , and as he pulls her into his arms, tips his head down and kisses her, he is whole.

 

 

 

 **I.** His uncle arrives at the manor, aged and worn but still straight-backed with purpose.

 

Her mother embraces him, but he stares at his nephew across the courtyard.

 

Ben squeezes Rey’s hand in his. She has listened. She has seen.

 

She is alive, and she is with him, and that is enough for now.

 

They turn and face the future, face their lives hand-in-hand.

 

For now, death sleeps.


End file.
